5. Interlude

Well hello! I’m back. This blog is just going to take a quick break from reciting my journey. I know I’ve been gone for a while so I just wanted to explain why. During this mental health journey there are always times when you will have a ‘setback’ and feel low and depressed. This is normal, and people who have experienced depression or any other mental heath illness (especially addiction) will understand that unfortunately, it doesn’t just go away like some candle you can blow out, and suddenly there are unicorns and rainbows on the other side. It’s hard, and there are days, weeks or even months when you feel like you are just holding on by a thread and the last straw is about to break the camels back. But you learn how to cope with these experiences, by using tools you have acquired throughout the years. The biggest one is talking. Telling someone how you feel, letting that pain out, crying and sobbing.

The normal human instinct is to bury how we feel, for many reasons: one reason is that sometimes we feel that if we do talk to people, we are inconveniences or burdens, meaning that people will reject us and humans HATE rejection. Another reason is because we are prone to avoid anything negative.

Imagine it like this: one day a deer and its mother are walking through the forest. The baby deer hears a loud bang and sees that the tragic result is the death of its mother. Because of this event, every time the deer hears that sound, it associates it with ‘bad’ and has to run away from it. Now imagine you are the deer, but there was no loud bang. Instead it’s inside your brain and you can’t physically run away from it, so what do you do? Well you bury it somewhere deep inside because otherwise it will kill you, like the deer’s mother was killed. In other words the more we bury our problems, the more we are running away from them.

What is the affect of running away from them? Well thousands of years ago, humans would have run as fast as they could to get away from a sabre-toothed tiger, if they couldn’t fight it. The constant fast running would burn all the stress meaning that if/when they escaped, there would be no pent-up energy stored that would affect them. Now humans aren’t running from or fighting sabre-toothed tigers, instead we are escaping overdue deadlines, mean bosses, nasty people, depression. The ‘fight or flight’ instinct is still there but we have no way to burn the stress other than to compartmentalise or bury it, meaning the stress has a really bad affect on us – not only mentally but also physically. It can cause horrendous diseases and we can even die from it. Humans need to learn to retrain our natural instincts when it comes to our mental health because if we don’t, the effects of this will be far worse than intended.

Other tools are distraction and using up energy. Now this might sound absolutely crazy considering what I wrote above, however in some circumstances distraction is really important. For example, as I wrote before about how we have no physical way to run from our problems like our ancestors did, there is actually one way: using up our energy! Specifically, anger is one of our emotions that really benefits from this. Sometimes just talking about anger isn’t enough when there is still so much pent up energy inside of us and personally, the way I use it up and distract myself is by singing. I’ve always loved it and when I sing I am like a dog with a bone; I don’t stop until I feel I have sung a song to the best of my ability. I could spend whole days singing, it really helps and is the tool I have learnt to use.

One thing I have definitely learnt throughout the years, is that there is a massive difference in expressing that you are angry and behaving angrily. When we express that we are angry, we can have a conversation, and talk about how we feel in a calm way so we can get our point across. When we behave angrily we swear, shout and sometimes even physically hurt ourselves or others. This will achieve nothing. That is why using our energy up is really important, because it teaches us to discipline our anger. A suggestion might be karate or jiu-jitsu, as these really teach our brain discipline and when (or when not) to attack or defend. However we have to use both tools to get to our achieved state of mind, which is not happiness, but balance.

These past few weeks I have really struggled. So I talked it out, with my close friends and family, until I, with the support of others, came up with a solution. I feel so much better now.